McMillan: NHL has to find way to win back disgusted fans

Hockey is back. It should be a cause for celebration for fans of the greatest game on ice, but pardon us if we're not quite in the mood just yet.

KEN McMILLAN

Hockey is back.

It should be a cause for celebration for fans of the greatest game on ice, but pardon us if we're not quite in the mood just yet.

For the third time in the past 18 years, this wonderful game has been ripped from our grasp for nothing that we, the fans of the NHL, have done. The latest insult was a work stoppage that darkened arenas for more than three months and left diehards scrambling to the college game or tired reruns on television.

And for what? So the team owners and players could fight over record profits following five consecutive years of revenue gains. For the parties involved, it clearly didn't matter that television ratings have been on the rise and 70 percent of the teams are playing to arenas filled to at least 95 percent capacity. Both sides in the labor dispute were briefed on the ramifications of yet another work stoppage prior to the lockout but to no avail. Loyalty be damned.

So the NHL went dark for three-plus months. The highly popular Winter Classic was lost. So, too, the NHL All-Star Game. The momentum of an energized season featuring deep playoff runs by the Rangers and Devils is gone, and so is any good will between the fans and the league.

So what's our payback? The "right" to watch a watered-down season? Permission to fill arenas with sky-rocketing ticket costs? For the fans it is, in a true "Animal House" sense, a case of "Thank you ... may I have another?"

It would be foolish to call for a boycott because there's no chance it would work, but there has to be some sort of protest. Write your letters to the teams, although you can expect them to be tossed away as easily as a hockey season. Bring your signs to the arena but it's highly unlikely house security will allow you to flash them and don't expect the TV networks — who are invested in the league — will air the complaints. An unmistakable gesture would be to turn our backs — literally — when the first puck is dropped until the first stoppage in play because that is exactly what ownership and the players did to us.

The most effective retribution — and the only one that these masters of greed understand — is hit them in the pocket book. Go ahead, support your team by wearing your old jersey for the truncated season, but don't buy the new sweater or the souvenirs for a year — after all, it's that piece of the pie, the hockey-related revenue, that these parties wrestled over.

The last time the NHL returned from a work stoppage, after they robbed us of the entire 2004-05 season, the teams painted a slogan "Thank you, fans" on the dasher boards upon our return, like we were supposed to be placated by such a hollow gesture. Words are cheap. We want something that we can bank on.

How about a rollback of ticket prices? A rebate for cable TV rates for games not aired on MSG Network or NHL Network, or, better yet, a big discount on the pay-per-view NHL Center Ice TV package? How about some healthy donations of time, money and equipment for youth hockey organizations as a means to foster the game with your next generation of fans?

In the big picture sense, the NHL doesn't have to worry about the fans coming back — history has shown time and time and time again that we will. All we ask is you just stop taking us for granted.